capture mpeg-2

mert wrote on 5/25/2009, 4:40 PM

Hi all, I am a longtime user of vegas audio ( yes, audio) and Acid Pro.

I am in the process of expanding into video. I have the demo of Moviestudio platinum and DVD arch.

My questions:
1: Is it possible to capture directly to mpeg2 format?
2: Can anyone recommend a decent capture card?

The reason I want to capture direct to mpeg2 format is to speed up time lost rendering from AVI for mpeg2 dvd. I do not plan on doing any editing, just dragging capture into DVD architect and setting up some chapters.

I am here to learn, so please school me, I have searched everywhere for answers.

Comments

stevec5000 wrote on 5/26/2009, 6:56 AM

I don't think video capture is ready for prime time yet.
My Hauppauge 1196 WinTV HVR-1250 PCI Express Hybrid High Definition TV Tuner Card ($50 from Amazon or Geeks.com) has video input and can capture in MPEG2 for either SD or HD format. However the WinTV software really sucks, there's no way to adjust the brightness, contrast or color intensity in HD mode. Also WinTV saves MPEG files that won't play back in any other program besides WinTV. Isn't MPEG supposed to be a standard? Sony VMS can open the file after it is imported but if any editing is done it becomes so unstable I can't do anything with it. However I found that if I use VideoReDo to edit the captured files then they will play back in VLC Media player and look great. VLC lets me adjust the brightness and contrast and it also de-interlaces the 1080i so the resultant video looks good.